Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Saturday, November 03, 2012

Books in Browsers 2012: A Publishing Industry Rushing into the Future- PW -

By Peter Brantley | PW - Oct 31, 2012

I just attended the Books in Browsers (BiB) conference, which I program with the support of the Internet ArchIve and O'Reilly Media. BiB, held within the luminous sanctuary at the Internet Archive in San Francisco, a former Christian Science church, is distinguished from other conferences by its focus on the software engineers and user experience designers who are creating new, born-digital ways of telling stories, and it's indicative of the audience that the most sought-after enhancement for future shows to was add a hackfest the day after the main sessions, something we will definitely incorporate in 2013.

At BiB, startups vastly outnumber established companies, and the conference has evolved into a venue for debuting new ventures and services. Rather than try to canvass the range of discussions, I'll highlight two personal, profound impressions. The first, which I believe was shared with many of the attendees, crystallized on Friday morning after two back-to-back edge-y presentations: the first by Liza Daly and Keith Fahlgren of Safari Books Online, and the second from Blaine Cook and Maureen Evans, launching a new venture called Poeti.ca. Liza's and Keith's presentation was a demo of a collaborative editing tool with voice recognition software recording their keynote in realtime, integrating github and Google Docs for revision control. Poeti.ca is an online multi-user copyediting tool with a beautiful user interface and intuitive operation, befitting a startup that unites the original developer of Twitter and creator of OAuth, with a poet who has innovated in the application of social media to writing. As Blaine suggested, "What we are trying to create is a sense of joy."